Page 9 - GALIET WE PERIKLES: Thyucidides IV

Galiet & Galiet
Like many beneficent and noble politicians (there shall be indeed indefinite numbers like me in the future), it is no surprise that I, Perikles, Aristocrat, Great Leader of the Polis 3⁄4 the mighty empire of Athens 3⁄4 master salesman and rhetorician in the art of democracy, meritocracy and equality (“because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people” [2.37.1]). Yes, I, Perikles, (I consider myself the center: I am “Athens’s Acropolis”) maker and knower of the great Athenian “spirit” 3⁄4 words in deeds 3⁄4 and its no less than perfect “influential” and “timeless” expansionist constitution whose vitality and glory (very much like the war goddess, our protector, Athena) is a model for all Hellenes; have been endowed with the power of leadership as a condition of political liberty.
I, Perikles the First, resolute Commander in Chief of the Delian League, am a genius in foreign tragedy. Shrewd policies of expansion, power, allegiance and resistance 3⁄4 with certain propensities to atrociousness 3⁄4 are my expertise; and since, I am most confident, that we, the people, don’t wish to be liberated into slavery, I command that you, citizens of Athens, look up! Look up here, I say, at this, the index finger of my right hand, for we, courageous Athenians, in knowing how to constitute a great “constitution” are now the world’s superpower. Allow me to remind you that our greatest strength is in our naval power, its flexible triremes, and I, Perikles, yes, I have gathered all of you, free and worthy citizens, on these deserted arid lands, close to the markets of the agora, beneath the immodest Acropolis, my altar, somewhere around 3⁄4
the loss of spring
3⁄4 and the time after “the thirty years’ truce which was entered into after the reconquest of Euboea lasted for fourteen years. In the 15th year, the forty- eighth year of the priestess-ship of Chrysis at Argos, the year when Aenesias was ephor at Sparta, and two months before the end of the archonship of Pythodorus at Athens, six months after the battle at Potidaea, at the beginning of spring, a
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